Morris Brown

Born in Charleston, SC, Bishop Morris Brown’s family belonged to a sizeable African American community that was mostly enslaved.  However, fortunately for Morris Brown, his parents were part of the city’s elite free population.  He was a prosperous shoemaker by trade but also a religious leader.  He travelled to Philadelphia to collaborate with Richard Allen in the founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816. 

Brown worked tirelessly to forge an independent African Methodist Church in Charleston. In 1818, Brown left a predominantly white but racially segregated Methodist Church in Charleston in protest against discrimination. More than 4,000 black members of the white churches in the city followed Brown to his new church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church of Charleston, later named Emanuel AME Church. 

In 1822, Brown and Emanuel AME came under investigation during the Denmark Vesey controversy.  The previous year, Vesey, a freed slave and one of the congregation’s local clergy, organized a slave uprising in the city.  Informed of the plot, white authorities arrested hundreds of alleged participants and a white mob burned the church building to the ground. Rev. Brown was implicated in the plot, imprisoned for nearly a year, but was never convicted of a crime. The congregation was forced “underground.” Denmark Vesey was executed, and Rev. Brown fled for his life along with his wife Bella and their two children sons: Morris Jr., a leading musician in Philadelphia, and Malcolm. They moved to Philadelphia.

The health of Bishop Richard Allen was declining and he needed an assistant, so on May 25, 1828, Morris Brown was elected and ordained as Bishop. Upon the death of Bishop Richard Allen in 1831, Brown took over the pastorate at AME Bethel Church, becoming the second bishop of the AME church.  He planted new congregations and established conferences of AME churches in the American Midwest and Ontario, Canada. He also mentored rising AME leaders such as the Rev. Daniel Payne and encouraged formal education for new preachers and pastors. Meanwhile the congregation in Charleston rebuilt Emanuel AME Church and worshiped there until 1834, when the city banned all African American churches.

Morris Brown died in Philadelphia on May 9, 1849.  He was first buried in the former Mother Bethel Burying Ground on Queen Street. Brown was later reinterred, next to Richard Allen in a vault in front of the Bethel Church on Sixth and Lombard.